It's time for China's developers to start constructing more "green" buildings to save energy and improve the environment, suggests a leading property advisor.

Awareness of sustainable real estate development and operation has lagged behind the West, Jones Lang LaSalle concluded in its first report on sustainable development in China.

"Implementing sustainable building practices in the real estate sector can and will make a significant contribution to the environment and the process is a partnership through proper planning and consultation between parties, including owners, occupiers and builders," said Anthony Couse, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle Shanghai.

"Greater benefits can be obtained when sustainable measures mutually reinforce one another."

Sustainable buildings, as defined by New Zealand Ministry for the Environment, are designed, built and operated with low environmental, social and economic impacts while still enhancing the health, welfare and quality of the people who live and work in them.

Green strategies mainly include energy conservation, water conservation, waste management and indoor air quality improvement, according to the report.

China is facing a tough situation. As the report pointed out, sustainable buildings in first-tier cities are at best limited to a handful of top-quality Grade A properties with very few examples in smaller cities.

And generally speaking, more than 80 percent of buildings in China fail to meet government efficiency standards, with up to 95 percent of buildings considered "high energy consuming." That makes average consumption levels two to three times higher than in developed countries, the report said.

"China has reached a critical point in its development, and although government has made good progress with enforcement effective at the district level, more needs to be done to significantly impact China's growing environmental issues," noted Justin Kean, the report's author.

Many local governments have made efforts to promote energy-efficient buildings, such as offering financial incentives to developers who use energy-efficient technologies.

And major provincial and municipal governments have started to halt the approval of new projects that fail to meet greener standards.

Big cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou have taken a leading role in enforcing environmentalism on properties.

For example, Shanghai is developing a sustainable building certification system and is drafting its own regulations for indoor air quality at the moment. In Beijing, developers are required to incorporate design features that guaranteeing energy savings.

And in Guangzhou, regulations governing air-conditioning health management took effect last March, and a three-tier pricing scheme has been adopted to encourage minimal power use.

China's State Environmental Protection Administration released a report last year stating that it would cost 84 billion U.S. dollars to clean up the pollution produced in China in 2004 alone, or three percent of the gross domestic product for that year.